


Thirteen Months (or is It a Year?)

by atheniavenesia



Category: DCU, Red Hood and the Outlaws (Comics), Red Hood/Arsenal (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Means Nothing to Me, Angst with a Happy Ending, Apologies, Bad BDSM Etiquette, Breathplay, Crying, Dom/sub, F/M, Family Feels, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Manipulation, Oliver's Chili, Past Drug Addiction, People Growing & Maturing, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-02
Updated: 2021-03-02
Packaged: 2021-03-15 10:20:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,247
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29806941
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/atheniavenesia/pseuds/atheniavenesia
Summary: Roy was told once that he loved too much. In NA, it's a character flaw. He didn't stay sober that time, but he keeps the idea with him.Two stints at rehab later, and he's understanding it better. He's been clean for a year (or thirteen months) and he's counting the days of a different problem. The problem isn't drugs, he's learned during this most recent sobriety. It's habits. Patterns.Jason is the worst of those.
Relationships: Dinah Lance/Oliver Queen, Roy Harper/Jason Todd
Comments: 10
Kudos: 47





	Thirteen Months (or is It a Year?)

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, so let me lead with this: canon is absolutely useless to me. I will literally attack James Robinson on sight like a wild animal. If you're a loyal reader of any Red Hood or Arsenal comics, I apologize deeply. I take things from basically anywhere in the timeline, mash them together, and then make my favorite characters have sex. It's a problem.
> 
> Besides that, there's some dark themes in here. I tried to reconcile a lot of different Roy runs into one, then tried to get that to make sense with a Jason who's like... not nice. The Jason that speaks to me the most isn't the most emotionally healthy, and he definitely wouldn't get along with my favorite runs of Roy.

Whatever Roy’s thing with Jason had been, it hadn't been forever. It’d been a lot of things — most of them bad — but not that. However, Roy thinks he’d wanted it to be. He’d wanted to have Jason, to possess him entirely. He’d wanted it so badly that it had to show on his face when they were in bed together.

They hadn’t talked about it. Even then, Roy'd had a lot of therapy under his belt. He’d known that he needed to communicate, to say what he wanted instead of hoping it just happened. He’d been scared, though. It’d been hard to talk about the important things when the biggest, baddest crime boss in Gotham had been looking at him so sweetly in the night. Jason had looked at Roy like he could’ve broken him, like the both of them had been delicate.

Neither of them had been delicate in so long.

It would have been a luxury to be. In the beginning, when Roy was still following Oliver around with stars in his eyes, it might have been possible. Now, he knows exactly how much force it takes to snap an arm in half. Knows how it feels to be on the receiving end of it.

Now he’s more scars than skin. On the mornings when Jason hadn’t been with him, he’d looked at his track marks in the dawn light. They hadn’t been as prominent then, almost invisible against the paleness of his arms. It’d been another thing they hadn’t talked about.

Jason had asked, on occasion, how he was doing. He’d asked it in the particular inflection only people in recovery could recognize. ‘Are you using again?’ he’d meant. ‘Am I going to find you dead in the bathroom one of these days?’ Roy hadn’t bristled. He’d smiled and given a sideways look. A nod, eventually. That’d enough for them.

Those times had become fewer and farther between. Gradually, like falling asleep. One moment you’re sitting in bed and wondering if you need to piss, the next it’s morning. Roy shouldn’t notice when he settles down in Star City and Jason doesn’t so much as call him.

He does. He’s not stupid. He notices it the same way he notices the creaky hinge on the front door that he never gets around to oiling between upgrading his defense systems. It’s the recognizance of a problem, a helplessness to change it.

He tries not to hold it against Jason. He fails. He fails a lot, at many different things. It’s his most remarkable trait, Oliver had said once; Roy can mess things up in ways nobody’s ever done before. That’d been at Roy’s third intervention. It hadn’t stuck that time.

Lian helps. She doesn’t realize that she’s helping, or at least Roy hopes not. He hopes she doesn’t recognize that her dad is a fuck-up of the highest caliber, that he’s only the better option when compared against a woman that spends longer making new poisons than she ever had holding her daughter.

Still, he managed to put himself back together. It took months. It was hard in the way nothing had ever been. Harder than detoxing, that’s for sure. He remembers the misery, but there’d been an end. No matter how bad it was, there was an end. It would stop, and then Roy would be on the other side.

It’s not a luxury he has this time. He can’t stop living. He can’t stop making dinner for his daughter, can’t stop his job at the garage, can’t stop enduring dinners at the Queen house so Lian can have something resembling family. He can’t stop any of that.

But Jason could. He did. He had a way about him. If you believe everything that came out of Gotham, Jason had a way of ruining things. When Roy’s angry, he believes it. When they’d been at their worst, he used to throw in Jason’s face how nobody could trust him. Just to hurt him.

Jason had known how to hurt him back. Roy’d gotten it back twice as hard as he’d given it. Jason had been trained by the world’s greatest detective, after all, in the art of getting to the heart of the matter. He’d said horrible, cruel things Roy couldn’t deny. He thinks sometimes that he’d earned it, the way he’d hurt Jason.

But that was then, and this is now. This is Jason on the other side of his front door with an arrogant smile and his hands in his pockets. This is Roy with the door open and the chain still in so he can only see him in slices.

“Miss me?” Jason asks.

It’s the stupidest thing Roy’s ever heard. He’s missed Jason more than anything. More than heroin, on most days. He can’t quite remember if he’s been clean for a year, or thirteen months, but he knows that it’s been a hundred-eighty-seven days since he’s seen Jason. He knows he’s not done sweating him out of his system.

“What do you want?” Roy asks.

He knows he’s going to let him in, but he has to try. He has to stand against the force of nature that’s Jason Todd. Otherwise, what’ll be left of him? Jason blows in and out of his life, and Roy’s not solid enough for that. He’s dust caught in the wake of him, only enough left on the ground to mark his final resting place.

Jason leans forward, rests his arm against the door frame. It brings his face close enough that Roy can smell the mint-and-coffee scent of his breath in the morning. It reminds him of their days on the run together.

“I can’t believe you’re back in Star City,” Jason says instead. “Thought you said you were never coming back.”

He looks incongruous against the dingy hall of his apartment building. Jason never lost the edge he’d gotten on the streets, but neither could he shed the polish of being Bruce Wayne’s son. He’s wearing a gray sweatshirt and ripped jeans like it belongs on a magazine cover.

“I had to,” Roy says. He sees Jason roll his eyes, so he adds on, “for Lian.”

That stops him. Jason sighs, like it’s an inconvenience. Roy’s so often an inconvenience.

“Invite me in,” Jason says. “I need to talk to you.”

For all that he hates him, Jason is so much like Bruce. They’re both cruel when they don’t mean to be. Jason doesn’t see it. He just looks at Roy like he’s an idiot for not jumping to listen to him. Another thing he gets from Bruce.

Roy’s chest aches when he pulls the chain free.

Jason smirks at him. Roy doesn’t step back and invite him in. Jason looks delighted by that. He steps forward, crowds Roy where he’s standing. His arm comes up to rest on Roy’s shoulder, and it’s so comfortable that he has to close his eyes against the nostalgia.

“Where’s the kid?” Jason asks.

“Lian,” Roy answers. He opens his eyes and tries for firm. “Her name is Lian.”

“Sorry, Papa Bear,” Jason laughs. He presses closer. His body is burning hot. “But that doesn’t answer my question.”

“With Dinah,” he finally says. “She stays the night twice a month.”

Jason’s hand goes to the back of Roy’s head. The hand that grabs his hair is rough, unpleasant. Familiar.

“They let your kid stay over more than they ever did for you,” Jason says.

“Stop it,” Roy says.

Just like the hand in his hair, this is painful and familiar. It’s Jason prodding at him, trying for a reaction. It’s all he ever wants. How far is too far? Roy’s got no room to talk about daddy issues, not with Oliver hanging over his head, but it’s not right what Jason does. All the hallmarks of a childhood with no affirmation. Roy read that in one of his parenting books.

“Now how about you let me in,” Jason says.

“How about you just come in anyways? See what happens.” Roy says.

It’s mean. Jason knows it’s mean, and that’s why he laughs. He presses forward even further so he can laugh into the muscle of Roy’s shoulder. When he’s done, his voice is hot against Roy’s ear.

“I wouldn't come into your house uninvited,” he says. “I’ve got better manners than that.”

It’s a lie. The way Jason catches his eye when he says it makes it clear they both know. Why he wants Roy to call him on it, nobody knows, but he doesn’t. He lets the moment pass.

Jason knows Roy’s good with his hands, knows he’s got physical security systems that not even a Bat could get through. That’s why he’s not coming in. That’s why he’s pressed against Roy to confuse the biometric scanner and keep the system from tasing him.

It wouldn’t stop the emergency alert from going off if he actually came in without voice confirmation, but that only works on strangers. Jason can’t know that he’s been programmed in since Roy installed the fucking thing. It’s some relief that he doesn’t.

“Come in, Jason,” Roy says.

Jason kisses him. He never kisses chastely, softly. He’s always open-mouthed and demanding from the first. It makes Roy’s head spin to be tasting him again, to have Jason overwhelming him after so long apart.

He kisses like he talks. He pushes. It’s so dizzying that Roy doesn’t realize he’s losing ground until his feet hit the coffee table. He almost goes down. Jason’s hand in his hair, on his hip, keeps him up. Roy can spend all night leaping over rooftops, but he can’t stay on his feet with Jason. There’s something to be said about that.

There’s something to be said about Jason using his leverage to spin Roy around, to make him face his apartment side-by-side with Jason like they’re friends. His hands rearrange themselves like it’s nothing, like Roy’s the only one tangled up by the encounter; one on his shoulder and one in his own pocket.

“Nice place,” Jason says.

It’s not. It a shitty two-bedroom that’s got more toys on the floor than food in the fridge. They’re in the middle of a living room full of mismatched furniture and staring out a window that faces into a filthy alley he won’t let Lian so much as look at.

“Please,” Roy says, and he didn’t want to start begging so early but he’s got no options, “tell me why you’re here.”

Jason pushes away from him. He swaggers his way to the small kitchen table Roy’s got pushed against the wall of his kitchen. He still walks like being big is a novelty to him. He doesn’t remember growing up, so it might as well be. So far as Roy knows, Jason came out of the pit like that, larger than life and twice as mean.

He still likes using his body to intimidate. Only an inch taller than Roy and it still works. Must be the extra forty pounds of muscle, the heaviness to his features, the fucking _je ne sais quoi_ of a trained killer. It’s just who he is.

Jason look down at the table. Something passes on his face, some emotion that Roy can’t name. It hard to name any of them when Jason keeps them tucked away so tightly. Whatever it is, it comes forward when he sees the plate of half-eaten chicken nuggets Lian left there that morning.

It might be fondness, but Roy’s never seen it on his face outside of bed. He’s never seen it in the day. It’s gone soon enough. What’s left is that same cockiness, that same barely-concealed disdain. He hooks one of the two chairs out with his foot, sinks into it hard enough that it complains against the weight.

“Have a seat,” he says to Roy.

He gestures at the table like it’s his place, like everything in the world belongs to him. Roy sighs, follows the order. It won’t end until Jason’s had his fill of this little show, until he gets to the heart of the matter. He sits on the same side of the table that Lian had sat in earlier. He looks down at her leftovers like he’s never seen them before.

“So,” Jason says, “how’ve you been?”

Roy shakes his head. He can’t look away from the food.

“You don’t care,” Roy says.

He hates how he’s whining. He can hear it bouncing off the linoleum, bringing his voice back to him like he’s never heard himself being pathetic before. Jason must hate it, too, the way he scoffs.

“Give it a rest,” Jason says. He doesn’t sound bothered, not too badly, but it’s on the edge of it. “Our little breakup hurt your feelings?”

“That’s not,” Roy begins. He sighs. He was right before. “You don’t care.”

Jason shifts in his seat. Roy knows that shift. He’s seen it from a distance plenty of times. It’s the sort of movement that makes him nock an arrow and start scoping points of entry because things are about to escalate. It’s the look of Jason on the attack, so different when he’s not in the Red Hood getup.

“You gonna keep telling me what I care about, Harper?” he asks.

It’s through gritted teeth. It’s not part of the game he usually plays, the teasing that always goes a step too far. It’s a flash of real anger. More than anything else, that’s what gets anger burning low in his own stomach. Poorly socialized as he is, Jason doesn’t get to be mad at him. Not after the bullshit he’s pulled.

“Then why don’t you tell me what you care about, Jaybird?” Roy replies. He twist the nickname in his mouth so it sounds like cussing. It might as well be, the way Roy feels right now. “First time for everything.”

“Quit the bullshit,” Jason says.

He’s dismissive, casual in the way he only is when his temper’s really starting to get away from him. Roy leans forward on the table, puts his elbows on either side of Lian’s panda bear-shaped plate. It’s a nice juxtaposition to the hard lines of his body right now.

“Fuck you,” Roy says. “You want to fuck with somebody, call up those new friends of yours.”

Jason laughs. “Jealous? Really? They’re an Amazon and a Kryptonian clone. You’re not really in the same league as them.”

“I’m not competing,” Roy says.

It stings that he’s so easily thrown aside. He knew that about Jason, knew that he was utilitarian to a fault. But there’s only so many times you can have your dick in somebody’s mouth before you start to think you matter.

Even now, Roy knows what this is about. Jason’s got another job, another goal, and Roy’d be good for it. Probably something complicated, something stealthy. Roy’s always been a good choice for stuff like that, adaptable and trustworthy as he is. There’s no ego in it. He knows what he’s suited for and doesn’t apologize for it.

He resents it, though. At times like this, he wishes it weren’t true. If he wasn’t so useful to Jason, would he still be strung along like this? His kid would definitely be safer; no looking over his shoulder to make sure nobody knows him, that nobody’s got Arsenal’s identity figured out. It was hard enough to leave the life behind after the last job with Jason, and the life hadn’t wanted to let him go.

He wishes it was Jason holding onto him like that.

“You’re right,” Jason says. He gives Roy a once over, starting at the feet and working his way up. When their eyes meet, that arrogance is back again. Roy hates him more than anything. “You’re not.”

Roy stands from the table. He wants to shout, shake Jason by the shoulders. He wants to use again, as much to hurt Jason as for the relief. He wonders if Jason would even care. It’s a petty and spiteful thought, and it cools his temper a bit to have it. He’s getting riled up, trying to hurt Jason the worst he can. He only stands and doesn’t cross his arms over his chest like he wants to.

“Just leave,” Roy says. He shakes his head. “I don’t want in on whatever job you’ve got planned. Leave me out of it.”

The dismissal gets Jason going. He stands from the table with eyes like ice and takes a step towards him.

“I’m not done with you,” he says.

His voice is a rumble in the air. It’s the voice that got Crime Alley under his control, that makes mob enforcers piss themselves. It’s terrifying. It’s a knockoff of Batman’s growl. It makes Roy smile to think that, and it makes him smile more to say it. He knows that both of those grins are savage things.

It takes Jason aback, only for a second. However, Roy’s been fighting for his life since before high school; he knows how to read people. He can see the minute flinch it brings to hear that he’s an imitation of the dad he can’t bear to see. Roy might even have felt bad for it, given enough time. He doesn’t get that time.

“You’re one to talk,” Jason says. He sneers. It’s an ugly expression that twists his handsome face into something crueler than usual. “You want to talk about dads, Roy? You sure? How about you start with yourself. You’re a fucking junkie and your daughter’s going to—”

Roy wants to know how he’s going to finish that. How bad would the end of that sentence hurt? He doesn’t get the chance. He’s across the kitchen as soon as he hears Jason say ‘daughter.’ He looks at the forearm he’s got across Jason’s throat, the arm pulled back for a punch.

He looks at Jason, limp in his arms. His lips are parted, vibrant red against the paleness of his skin. His face has always been so light from wearing that stupid helmet of his, always ghost-like. It makes the blue of his eyes even more deep, the green at the edges so much more ghastly.

He’s looking at Roy and panting, the breaths choked where they have to get past the muscle of Roy’s arm. His eyes are wide and soft. There’s a softness to his whole body now. He always lets go when Roy gets like this, when Roy lets his anger move his body. And why not? It’s what he wants.

“Stop it,” Roy threatens. He sees Jason’s eyes flicker to him, sees them almost focus. “Don’t talk about my daughter. Don’t you fucking dare.”

“Didn’t even know you had one,” Jason whispers. His voice is so gentle, his eyes are so distant. He licks his lips, pink tongue against red lips, and Roy tries not to focus on the shine of spit left behind. “Found out from Dick.”

“You didn’t ask,” Roy replies. The anger starts to drain out of him, it’s replaced with a hurt he thought he was long over. Doesn’t matter, though, because being abandoned always hurt the same. “You disappeared.”

With the loosening of pressure, some of that haziness fades from Jason’s face. There’s a moment of confusion, of anger, before Roy returns it. Before he brings Jason back to the only place he’s ever content.

“Please,” Jason says. He’s not asking to be released, even when he strains away from Roy’s arm pinning him. He repeats it, “please.”

“I hate you,” Roy says.

He wants to spit it at Jason, wants to make it hurt, but he can’t. He says it softly, the way he wants to say the other thing, the thing neither of them can bear to hear. He feels the anger building in him higher and higher, and he doesn’t realize he’s pushing harder against Jason’s neck until he hears a wheeze that tapers off into nothing.

There are veins on the side of Jason’s head bulging out, redness marring that beautiful skin. Jason could get out if he wanted to, would get out if it was anybody else. He doesn’t, though, because it’s Roy. He goes limp, still except where the primitive part of his brain can’t help but twitch his fingers. Roy wonders if he could kill Jason. If he’d be allowed to.

He releases him instead. He lets him slump against the wall and heave raggedly for air. He watches him and thinks he might have been telling the truth earlier, that he does hate him. There’s something in the back of his throat that burns like fire when he watches Jason slowly straighten up. Some of that fight is back, but it leaves again when Roy jerks his head towards the hall.

“Room,” he orders.

Jason stumbles when he steps away from the wall. Roy doesn’t catch him, lets him fall against the table so it scrapes against the floor. The sound seems to bring him back to himself a bit more, enough that there’s teasing in his voice when he next speaks.

“Which one’s yours?” he asks. “I don’t want to end up in your—”

He cuts himself off there. Roy knows why. He’d given Jason an order when he’d been choking him, told him never talk about Lian. It’s the only time he listens, and it’s all the more powerful for it. He won’t even mention her obliquely, not for the rest of the day. It’s a commandment between them, and he’s not recovered enough to be sacrilegious.

“The one without a crib in it,” Roy sneers like Jason had done earlier.

He doesn’t sound pathetic anymore. He sounds mean, the way he only ever was when he was coming down. It’s the way Jason likes him, the way he hates himself. Jason licks his lips again, an unconscious gesture, and nods. He takes an unsteady step away, but stops. He looks over his shoulder at Roy, and he shouldn’t be able to look so small, not when he’s so obviously not, but he manages. There’s something lost in his face when he looks at Roy.

“Go,” Roy says. He clenches his jaw so hard he hears the rushing of blood in his ears. “Get out of my fucking sight.”

Jason nods and disappears down the hall. He closes the door softly behind him, gentler than he’s ever been with Roy outside of this dumbass game he plays. It makes him want to scream, to rip his own hair out. He looks at the plate of uneaten food on the table. He throws it at the wall as hard as he can.

It hits the wall perfectly on one edge, splits into two pieces. Food is all over the kitchen, nuggets rolling under counters. Why this? Why him? What is it that Jason needs that he provokes Roy until he’s the slavering beast of his earliest memories? Jason wants him subservient in the day and domineering the minute his cock gets hard.

It’s not just that, though. It’s not just that he needs Roy assertive. He needs him mean, meaner than even Jason manages most days. Not even Jason would hit him, would choke him like he wants Roy to do to him. He wants Roy to be the worst he can manage, and he doesn’t care what it does to him.

He’ll pick up the food later. Right now, he’s stalking down the hallway like he’s expecting a fight. It won’t be, not now that Jason’s getting what he wants. Roy only has to fall in line and everything will be okay. It makes him sick.

He opens the door and Jason’s naked on his bed. He’s thick all the way around, the taper of his chest to his waist not nearly as defined as Roy’s own. He’s powerful. The muscle there, it’s not for show like with Dick. Neither is it localized like Roy, all in his arms and chest. It’s all around, functional and not there for appearance’s sake.

It means that it shouldn’t look as good as it does. The strength of that body shouldn’t be as appealing as it is, especially when it’s shifting under more scars than Roy’s ever seen on one person. It is, though. Jason’s gorgeous, and most of the time, he knows it. His eyes are shy, though, when they meet Roy’s. He doesn’t know it now. It’s not a part of the game he plays here, the arrogance has been stripped like copper wire.

He doesn’t belong in Roy’s room. Roy has that same sense he’d had seeing him in the hallway, that same dissonance. Jason on his cheap sheets, against the backdrop of bent blinds and spare parts on the floor, is wrong. He should be somewhere nicer. Be with someone nicer. He should let Roy be nice, just once.

“You’re ruining my life,” Roy says.

It’s honest, he thinks. Jason’s breath hitches and he looks away. It’s honest, and it infuriates him that he can only say it here, on Jason’s terms. It doesn’t soothe him to see the guilt in Jason’s eyes before he’s staring at the bedspread beneath him.

He’s cross-legged on the bed, his limbs arranged so that he’s as small as he can manage without making himself uncomfortable. Even his arms are crossed over his stomach, hiding the bottom of the autopsy scar. The top of it is still visible, though, that branching ‘y’ reaching towards his shoulders.

“Roy,” Jason says.

Roy shakes his head. He starts stripping from his clothes in efficient movements, they way he would change out of them if he was going to go on patrol. He doesn’t do that anymore, though. He’s out of the game, and the only reminders of it are the lessons ingrained into muscle memory.

“Don’t say my name,” Roy says. His hands don’t shake, but they should. If he was anybody besides Arsenal, they would be. He can see the flush on his own chest from how angry he is. “Unless I ask you a question, don’t say a fucking thing. Understand?”

Before he’s even finished speaking, he’s just as naked as Jason. He looks up and sees that Jason’s eyes are on his cock already. He knows what it looks like right now from long experience. No matter how much he hates it, hates what Jason’s doing to him, he knows that it’s rock hard. He knows that the head is nearly as red as the hair it’s nestled in. It feeds the anger in him to know that all this turns him on. He could puke.

He rushes forward again, gets a hand around Jason’s throat. He’s got the grip strength of a lifelong archer, and he uses it to squeeze. It’s not choking, but it almost is. It’s on the verge of it, only stopped because of the question he’s asking.

“When I ask a question, you answer,” he says. He shakes his hand once and Jason’s head lolls back and forth for a moment. “Do you fucking understand me, Jason?”

Another of those involuntary movements, another time licking his lips. Jason’s more flushed than Roy.

“Yes,” Jason says. He shifts where he’s sitting, tries to lean closer to Roy. “Yes, sir.”

The nausea grows. Jason’s voice is earnest, and it makes it worse. This is the only time he gets respect from Jason, the only time anybody gets respect from him.

“Suck it,” Roy says instead of anything else.

He doesn’t know what he’ll say if anything else comes out of his mouth. The only solution is to put something in Jason’s. The irony isn’t lost on him.

He shifts his grip so he’s got Jason’s hair clenched in his fist. It’s just long enough that Jason can’t get away from the pressure of it. Does Jason keep it this long on purpose, he wonders. He always talks about Roy’s hair being a tactical weakness, but only one of them gets a hand tangled in it on a regular basis.

He stands up straight and pulls Jason’s head to his cock. Jason yields easily, his mouth fire-hot when Roy puts the head in. He pauses, looks at the image beneath him. There’s already tears in the corners of Jason’s eyes, already spit at the corners of his mouth. He’s stunning like this and they haven’t even started.

Roy watches as he feeds it to Jason, as his cock disappears into that wet heat. Jason doesn’t meet his eyes, closes them and lets his body go more lax. Using him like this is almost masturbating, save for the sensation.

It feels perfect, the way it always does. There’s nothing but spit and an eager tongue and, when he pushes Jason down as far as he can manage, the spasming of his throat. Jason doesn’t suck cock, not like Roy does. He just takes it, lets it cut off his breathing as surely as Roy had earlier.

When Roy looks, Jason’s own cock is straining against his stomach. It’s a good size — not as big as Roy’s and that might be part of of the appeal for him — but Jason ignores it. He doesn’t notice the way precum is leaving a wet trail where it’s sliding down the shaft, the way it looks almost painful to go without relief.

For him, there doesn’t seem to be anything but the slide of Roy in and out of his mouth, Roy’s hand in his hair. For a while, Roy lets that be all there is for him, too. It’s easy to just let the sensation take him away. It’s happened before, Jason on him for an hour with Roy keeping himself just on the edge. There was something meditative about the wet noises of Jason’s throat working, of the gasps when Roy pulled him back enough to breathe.

That’d been back when he was using, when he had nothing to lose. At the bottom, you couldn’t feel worse. There was some relief in being the monster Jason wanted him to be, in taking what he wanted without concern. There was novelty in that.

There’s no novelty anymore. It feels like relapsing to have Jason gagging around him, to hear his own panting loud in his ears. He’s harder than he’s been in months. Not since the last time Jason found him, in fact.

He pulls Jason back. Jason makes a small noise of complaint, tries to chase him where Roy pulls away. He looks up, though, and goes still. Roy feels evil, knows it shows on his face how much he hates the both of them. And Jason just sits there. Probably thinks it’s all a part of his little game. Roy bares his teeth, feels the ache of tension all the way up his neck.

“You got yourself ready, didn’t you?” Roy asks.

He knows the answer before he even asks it. Jason would have done it, would have sat at whatever safehouse he’d found in Star City and fingered himself open with those soft sighs that haunt Roy’s dreams. He would have done it because he knew Roy would cave, would give him what he wanted, treat him the way he liked.

He knows all of this before Jason leans into the hand in his hair like it’s a comfort and gives him a sweet smile. As sweet as he can manage with drool starting to come down his neck and red rimming his eyes.

“Yes,” Jason says. “Please, Roy.”

Roy pushes him back with more force than he needs. Jason hits the bed hard enough that he bounces, that he has to scramble to get his bearings. Roy barely gives him enough time for that.

He climbs over Jason, cages him between his arm. His cock, heavy between his legs, settles just along Jason’s. It paints the skin there with precum and viscous spit. Jason gasps at the sensation. It’s the closest he’s going to get to a hand on him, the closest he wants to it.

Roy wanted to lave the skin there with his mouth once, to give him the focused attention Jason reserves for moments like this. He wanted to treat him right. Now, though, he barely wants to look at him. Jason’s a need now, and an inconvenient one at that. He reminds Roy of the Gotham air, polluted enough to burn your throat the first time but still so vital to the people there.

He reaches down and positions himself at Jason’s ass. He needs the excuse to look away from the content expression on his face anyways. He settles for watching the tip of him press against Jason’s hole. He pushes forward and stares at the way the muscle gives way for him. Jason is making a punched-out sound, catching his breath with gasps that don’t seem enough to sustain him.

Roy doesn’t stop. He keeps going, presses into him until his cock is gone, until his hips are pressed against the firm muscle of Jason’s ass. Once there’s nothing to see there but the copper patch of his own pubic hair, he has to look away from that, too. The heat of Jason’s body is too much for him, wrapped around his cock and radiating off his body.

If he looks at the place where they’re joined, he’ll get the wrong idea about this. He might think he matters, that this is anything other than stress relief. Jason comes to Roy because he’s the only person fucked up enough to give it to him the way he wants, the only person stupid enough to fall for his manipulations.

He’s not strong enough to have those tender feelings and survive Jason leaving again. Neither is he strong enough to look away from Jason entirely. He should just look at the wall and use Jason the way he wants to be used, to fuck into the tight heat beneath him without a thought for the person attached. He can’t.

Instead, he goes back to Jason’s face. There’s something like wonder in his expression. He meets Roy’s eyes and then there’s happiness, too. It shouldn’t look as pure as it does, not when Roy’s so deep inside him and Jason’s hair is sticking up from where Roy’d been pulling it. It does, though, and it feeds the anger in him anew.

They could have been happy like that, he thinks, all the time. If Jason gave a little, compromised the way Roy does — the way he always has — it would have been good. They could have had a life worth talking about. Roy wouldn’t be raising his daughter alone, wouldn’t be working a job he hates because it’s the only way he can pay the bills without having a supervillain come up to his front doorstep.

What he got was Jason on his schedule. Jason when he wanted Roy, how he wanted Roy. Jason who used him when it suited him and left him when it didn’t. Jason who he loved some days, and he hated most. He looks down at that smile and knows today is a day where he hates him.

He sets about cumming. That’s all this is about, he knows. He doesn’t spare a thought for Jason’s pleasure, for the grunts he makes every time Roy bottoms out. He things only of the tightness at the base of his cock when he’s buried in Jason, only of the tightness that’s starting to build low in his stomach.

Their soundtrack is raw, the noises of two people fucking. It’s Jason making those involuntary noises. It’s Roy panting with exertion. It’s the creaking of his cheap bed as it endures a pounding from a man who’s spend most of his life running, jumping, and shooting.

His hair clings to his neck, to the sweat building up there. He has to be glistening with it. Jason certainly is. It makes him look ethereal, a adjective that shouldn’t apply to a man wearing the marks of his death across his skin. He's even more lovely when he's cumming.

He changes his angle, goes from the deep in-and-out to a shallower grind. His box spring might not survive more of the former. Besides, it’s to hit Jason’s prostate. He’s got perfect aim, and he never forgets a target; it’s inevitable that it happens. Jason gasps louder, tosses his head to either side at the drag of Roy’s cock against it.

“Roy,” Jason says. “I—”

“Shut up,” Roy says.

He’s gritting his teeth. He doesn’t want to hear Jason sounding so good beneath him, so perfect. Jason only arches up, only lets those gasps turn to groans that sound dragged out of him. He tries again to speak.

“I need—” he starts.

Roy braces himself on one arm so he can wrap a hand around Jason’s throat. He knows what Jason needs. It’s obvious looking down at him. His cock is leaving wet trails against his stomach where it’s being jostled with every move of Roy’s hips. He knows what Jason needs, and he gives it to him.

“Quit fucking talking,” Roy says.

And he squeezes. Jason’s face starts to turn red again. Roy hates this. He hates Jason, he hates himself. He has nothing but hate in him, and it’s so familiar.

He feels Jason tighten around him, feels the weak flailing of a hand against his arm. He looks down. The redness has taken on a distinctly purple hue, there are tear tracks down his face, and Jason is cumming. His stomach is painted in it, and Roy has only a moment to stare before he’s letting go of Jason’s neck.

Jason starts taking gasping, wet breaths. Roy only puts his other hand back down and goes back to pounding him into the mattress. He doesn’t last much longer. It’s when Jason coughs, when he feels him tighten on his cock with those involuntary muscles, that he buries himself fully and shoots into Jason.

He doesn’t know he’s roaring his release until after it’s done, until it’s fading from his ears and he notices the absence. He lets his body slump forward, takes some of the weight off his legs. No matter how much he’d been using his arms to keep stable, they’re always going to be the strongest part of him. It’s the reality of being an archer, he supposes.

It’s something to hold onto, especially when nothing seems quite real. He pulls out with a wet sound and looks as Jason’s hole clenches against nothing for a moment. Jason keeps coughing like an assault victim, and it’s all suddenly too much.

Roy sits on the floor with his back to the bed. He can’t do it anymore. He can’t a good hero, a good father, or even a good fucking person. He listens to Jason try to compose himself and has to press his fists against his eyes to keep the heat there from spilling over.

He doesn’t know how long he sits there trying not to cry. It’s long enough that Jason finally manages to recover, enough that all he can hear are his own harsh breaths. Distantly, now that there’s not the sound of their rutting, he can hear the street outside.

Eventually, Jason puts a hand on his shoulder. Roy lets him. It doesn’t matter anyways. He’d gotten dominated the way he wanted, and now he’s good. Satisfied. He’s probably still half in that foggy and accommodating mindset. He’ll be nice for a while yet, at least until the cum starts to dry on him.

“Roy,” Jason says. He might sound tentative. It’s hard to make out beneath the hoarseness of his throat. It would have been bad enough after that throat-fucking, but he sounds like the living dead now. Pun not intended, he figures. Fuck. “Harper.”

“Why?” Roy asks.

His voice is fine, if a little tight. He knows how to sound normal when he’s been crying, and a close call is even easier. He’s still looking at the blackness of his palms so he can’t see it, but he hears Jason moving around. He’s surprised by the heat next to him. He takes his hands away to see that it’s Jason, curled up next to him, his head pillowed on Roy’s shoulder. It’s so much like he wants that it almost starts him crying in earnest.

“Why me?” Roy repeats. “There’s so many people out there who like shit like this. Just as much as you do, probably. Why do you always come to me?”

Jason nestles closer. He’s got that Bat-flexibility, and it helps him to fold himself smaller and smaller. An origami person, infinitely more delicate than paper.

“You’re good,” Jason says. “I trust you.”

“You’re ruining me,” Roy says. He turns so he can look at Jason, pushes his shoulder so he has to turn and face him. “I can’t do it anymore. I care too much, and you don’t. You come here and you blow in and out of my life, and I can’t stop you. But please, if I mean anything to you, you’ll leave me alone.”

Jason tilts his head. “You stop.”

“I can’t!” Roy shouts. Jason flinches and Roy hurts deep in his chest at it. He looks forward instead of pulling away, tries to get his voice low again. “You know me, Jaybird. I know you do. I can’t stop anything once I start it. Even if it kills me, I can’t let it go. And I do anything to keep it. At least heroin doesn’t fucking talk. It doesn’t show up at my house every six months and make me the kind of person I can’t stand looking at in the mirror.”

Jason’s surfacing fast from wherever he’d been. Roy knows it when he sees something irritated flicker across his face, when his answer is on the verge of dismissive.

“Not that bad,” he says. His voice is so rough that it has to hurt to talk. “Just rough sex.”

Roy shakes his head. “It’s not, and you know it. It’s dangerous. You get me wound up, and I’m not the kind of person that can do shit like this without talking it through. I forget, sometimes, what I’m doing. I could kill you. I almost did.”

“You didn’t.”

Roy runs a hand through his hair and leans back. His neck hits the mattress, and he ends up looking at the ceiling. Thankfully, he’s not in the wet spot.

The idea is almost hysterical. He’s grateful he’s not in the wet spot while his dick is drying sticky against his leg and Jason’s probably leaking cum on his carpet. Priorities. He huffs a laugh.

Jason moves against the side of him, repositions himself so his head is in Roy’s lap. His breathing is calm and regular, strange only for the way it rattles on the inhale. It tickles the hair on his stomach with every puff of air. He almost laughs again, but then he knows he’ll cry for real.

“I love you, Jaybird,” he says.

It’s good to have it out in the air. The first step is admitting you have a problem. He laughs at that. A real one, too loud in the silence after his statement. He laughs until he proves himself right and has to bite back a sob.

“Roy,” Jason says.

He doesn’t sound surprised. He sounds exhausted.

“You already know it,” Roy says. He’s still looking at the ceiling, picking out shapes in the popcorn patterns. “You’re too smart not to.”

Jason clears his throat. It has to hurt because Roy feels the wince he makes when he does it.

“Not now,” he says. “Please. Just want to be with you.”

Roy pulls his head off the bed. He looks at Jason in his lap. He’s so beautiful it hurts. There’s something magic in the way he’s pressed against Roy’s stomach. Roy hasn’t been out of the game long enough to start getting chubby, but there’s some fat there that wasn’t before. Jason’s using it to its best advantage, pressed firmly against it so no light can reach him.

Roy brings a hand up. He hesitates, but only for a moment. He lets his hand go back to Jason’s hair. It’s so soft when he’s not gripping it tightly enough that his arms shake. He lets his fingers comb through it, works softly against the knots he finds. It settles something in his heart to do it.

Jason’s breath catches, but eventually it evens out. There’s only those twin rhythms, Roy’s fingers against a scalp and Jason’s rasping inhales. It’s so sweet, so close to what he wants. He smiles down at him, and Jason smiles into Roy’s stomach like he can feel the grin on it.

Roy remembers following Jason around the world. This is what he’d been chasing. The stretches of normalcy. The time he has where Jason indulges him, doesn’t twist him against his own better nature.

What Jason wants, more than anything, is to play with fire. It’s dangerous the way he does it, and it’s because he doesn’t care about getting burned. It’s the point of the whole thing. Roy’s a tool to him, the same as his guns. Worse, maybe, because at least Jason cares about them.

Roy can hurt Jason. Has hurt him, in fact. If it keeps up, he’ll do worse. He thinks of Jason’s hand hitting weakly at his arm earlier. There’s somebody out there that can give Jason what he needs, just the same as he’d said, but it can’t be him. Whatever it is that Jason wants, it can’t come from the spiteful anger Jason carries around.

They’re too alike, Roy thinks. They both get swept up in anger and don’t realize what they’re doing until it’s too late. Roy, though, doesn’t make himself the target. Jason takes it all on, probably a holdover from his Robin days. The brightest target on the field, and you expect not to get hurt?

“Jaybird,” he says gently. It’s nice to talk to him without hesitance or anger in his voice. “Don’t tell me you’re going to sleep on me.”

Jason smiles harder and stretches a bit. He pulls far enough away from Roy’s stomach that he can meet his eyes. The hair on the back of his head plays against Roy’s cock, and he shivers at the sensation.

“In the bed,” Jason says. “Come on.”

Roy shakes his head. “Not today. Get comfortable, though.”

Jason gives him an odd look, but he eventually listens. He clambers to his feet and stretches again, harder. His body shouldn’t be able to look lean, not with the muscle he’s packed on, but he manages anyways. He turns his body into the graceful lines of a statue, settles it back into the solid shape of a man.

“Fine,” Jason says. “Water?”

Roy gets to his feet a bit slower than Jason. “Sure thing.”

He goes to the kitchen to grab a glass of water. He fills it up and looks at that horrible alley. There’s a man trying to drag a couch away from the dumpster. It makes Roy smile again. He remembers those days, filling warehouses with abandoned furniture because he didn’t have the money for anything better.

He brings the drink back to Jason, sets it on the nightstand. He bought that, he remembers. Secondhand, but he’d done it. It was something he’d worked for on his own, that he’d done just the same as everything else in this place. In this life he’d made.

He pulls on a pair of underwear, probably Jason’s by how baggy they are in the back, and heads out of the room. Lian’s already got her overnight back with her, but he’s got a spare piece of luggage in her closet. He loads it with some more clean clothes, a couple of her favorite toys.

He goes to his room, then, packs a few of his own things in the bag. There’s not much, but he’ll be fine. He’s not prone to getting food ground into his shirt, after all, so he doesn’t need quite as many clothes as his daughter. He manages to pull on some sweats and a t-shirt, too. He’s getting some of his own underwear into the bag when Jason speaks.

“What’s happening?” he asks.

Roy turns and sees that Jason is half-under the blanket. Still naked, still covered in the tacky remnants of sex. Roy straightens.

“I’m leaving,” he says.

“What?”

There’s something nice about being able to surprise Jason. It’s almost as good as being soft with him. Not quite, but there’s nothing like that. Roy sighs.

“I’m going to go to Ollie and Dinah’s,” Roy says. “Maybe a week or so, just for a change of pace. Feel free to stay here until I’m back.”

“Why are you leaving?” Jason asks.

Talking looks painful, but he presses on. If anything, it looks to fire him up more. There’s an stubborn set to his brow that Roy recognizes.

“You’re using me to hurt yourself,” Roy says. Jason opens his mouth to argue, but Roy holds up a hand. It’s the sort of thing that shouldn’t work on Jason, but it does. He seems so curious right now. “We’re both adults. I know it’s hard to believe, but it’s true. I can’t blame you for the things I do, same as you don’t blame me for your shit.

“But Jaybird, you’ve gotta know this is dangerous. I don’t want to hurt you like this anymore. If we were better together, if you talked to me about it, it wouldn’t be a problem. Just a little rough sex, just like you said. We’re bad, though. I think you want me to kill you sometimes, and I might one of these days. We’re both too dangerous to play those sorts of games. I get all fucked up, and you use that to punish yourself.”

“Don’t,” Jason says. He coughs, and Roy’s throat aches in sympathy. “Don’t tell me what I do.”

“Then I’ll tell you what I’m doing,” Roy replies. “I’m leaving before this gets any worse. I love you, just like I said earlier. So fucking much. More than anybody in the world except my daughter, you know? But that’s the problem. She comes first. If you have your way, she’s going to grow up with me all twisted up and hating you as much as I love you. I don’t want that for her. And that means I can’t want it for me, either.”

“Are you breaking up with me?” Jason says.

He’s trying for a sneer, but it’s ruined by the state of him. He’s in pain and naked and furious.

“We weren’t together,” Roy says. “Please, Jay, don’t come back once you leave. For both our sakes.”

He goes to the door. It would have been nice if he could say that it was easy, but it would have been a lie. It’s not until he’s in the garage that he stops thinking Jason’s going to come running after him and return his feelings. He has to pull over twice to cry, and he does it again when he’s getting out of the car at Ollie and Dinah’s.

The world seems like it’s spinning around him. He knew Jason was addictive, but the comedown is like nothing ever. He can’t even breathe past the rock in his heart.

“Roy?” he hears. “Jesus, Roy, what happened?”

He can see the shape of Ollie approaching, hands out like he’s trying to placate him. It should be funny, the idea of Oliver Queen comforting him, but it only makes him cry harder. He’s a fucking disaster.

When Oliver finally reaches him and puts his hands on his shoulders, probably to try and shake some sense into him, he only falls forward into a hug. He grips Ollie like he’s dying and cries into his chest like he hasn’t in years. Not even at that last intervention, the one that stuck.

“Fuck,” Oliver says. He stumbles, probably expecting an arrow in the ribs, but he catches himself. He alternates between platitudes and shouting. “Roy, what’s wrong? Jesus Christ, you’re heavy. Dinah, get out here! Roy, are you hurt? What’s going on? Dinah, seriously, hurry!”

He hears the sound of hurrying behind Ollie before Dinah’s visible. She’s got a smudge of paint on her cheek from where she was probably finger painting with Lian.

“Ollie, somebody better be dying—Roy?” She hurries closer, inserts herself between Ollie and Roy so she can take his weight. She’s probably stronger than both of them. “Roy, I need you tell me what happened. Are you hurt?”

Roy can’t even answer her correctly. He squeezes her to him and buries his face on her shoulder.

“I had to leave him,” he tries to say. “I love him so much, Dinah. It hurts so bad.”

Dinah makes a sound of understanding. She pulls him far enough away from her that she can look in his eyes. She’s so sweet, better than he or Ollie deserve. It reminds him of the last time they’d been like this, back when he’d been detoxing. He cries harder.

They both ignore Ollie saying, “leave who?”

“You’ll be okay,” Dinah says to him. She looks in his eyes and he can see her understanding. “It doesn’t feel like it right now, but it’ll be okay. Just let it out.”

Roy thinks the advice is a little redundant because he couldn’t possible let it out any more than he already is, but he doesn’t get a chance to say it. His heart is pounding so hard he thinks he might die, and there’s no room for a thought that isn’t Jason.

“Ollie,” Dinah says over her shoulder, “go watch Lian for a bit. I’m going to stay out here with Roy.”

“Sure, but who’d he—”

“Ollie,” she warns.

“Fine,” Oliver says. He puts his hands up in surrender. “It’s not like it got snot on my shirt over it, or something.”

“Ollie!”

She sounds decidedly less amused this time. Oliver goes. He doesn’t make any parting comments, or at least none that Roy can hear. He’s admittedly more concerned with keeping upright.

“I have to see her,” he gasps out.

Dinah guides him away from the house instead. Her hand is making slow circles on his back.

“Not right now,” she says. “You’ll scare her. Let’s calm down a bit and then I’ll take you in, okay?”

She takes him back to his car, helps him up so he can sit on the trunk next to her. Then she just lets him cry. It feels like it lasts forever, and there’s something so familiar about the sensation that it starts him up again once it starts to taper off. He cries about it all, never as grateful for Ollie’s secluded serial killer mansion as he is in that moment.

When he’s finally finished, he’s got his head in her lap and she’s running her hands through his hair. It’s so familiar to what he’d done with Jason that he’d be blubbering again if he had any tears left in him. Fortunately, he doesn’t. His eyes are swollen and his head is pounding, but it doesn’t seem like there’s anything left in him.

“Do you want to talk about it?” she asks.

Her hand pauses while she waits for an answer. He only speaks to get it going again. Dinah reminds him of Brave Bow sometimes. Kind in a way that never seemed forced. It was the sort of people they were, all compassion and with a backbone of steel.

“He came over today,” he says into the twilight sky. There’s barely any stars in the sky, funny considering the name of the town, but there’s more here than he can see from his apartment. “It was the same as always.”

Dinah doesn’t stop petting his hair when she asks the next question. “And what’s that like? ‘The same as always’?”

“He tries to make me hate him,” he answers, “and it works. It scares me how much I hate him. And then I hate myself for what I do.”

“What is it that you do, Roy?” she asks.

“Nothing he doesn’t make me,” is the answer.

He doesn’t realize how it sounds until Dinah’s hand stops again. There’s a sudden tension in her body, and he plays his answer back. What does it say about him that the only person who loves him in the world besides Lian is willing to believe he’s some fucking abuser? What does it say that he thinks she’s right? It twists something deep inside of him, and a hidden reserve of tears he didn’t have wet his eyes.

“Can you explain that to me?” she asks.

Her voice is calm. If he wasn’t so attuned to her, he wouldn’t recognize the deliberation in her words. She’s a professional, and so good at what she does.

“He asks me to hurt him,” he says. His face is red, and he knows that it looks fucking horrible against his hair, but he can’t help it. He doesn’t want to talk sex. It doesn’t help that his voice is still thick with tears. “In bed.”

She relaxes imperceptibly. Her hand starts back up.

“And you don’t like that?” she leads him with.

“I hate it,” Roy says. “Or I think I do. I hate how he does it. Why he does it. I don’t like feeling like that, like I’m out of control. I don’t want to be that person.”

“And that’s why you left?”

“Yeah,” he says miserably. “And I know it was the right thing to do, but he’s so sweet sometimes. It’s the way it could be, and it makes me feel like shit that I left him when he wanted me there. I love him so much.”

“You did good,” Dinah says. No matter what Roy’d said, there’s a moment of relief that Dinah thinks it was a good move. “You just have to feel this hurt, Roy. It’s not going to feel good, but it’s going to be good. You need it. Let yourself feel sad and angry and upset, alright? Feel all of those things as they come, and when they’re finished, let them go. Don’t hold onto them because you think you deserve them, or because you think it’s the right thing to do. Can you manage that?”

And Roy already knew what she was going to say, but it’s different hearing it from her. Her voice is so steady and she’s so sure of herself. It makes it seem like the obvious choice, but the way she strokes his hair makes it so he doesn’t seem stupid for not thinking of it himself.

“Okay,” he says. He slowly sits up. He doesn’t want to look at her suddenly. He scrubs his hands over his face to put it off. “Can I go see Lian now?”

She laughs. “Sure thing. And Roy?”

He finally turns. She’s got her hair up in a ponytail and is wearing one of those horrible tracksuits Ollie buys for working out. She looks incredible. He loves her differently from how he loves Ollie or Lian. Maybe how he’d love a mom, he thinks. He looks away before she can see the thought in his eyes. She smiles and he thinks he wasn’t successful.

“What is it?” he asks the dirt.

She slides off the trunk, dusts her butt off with efficient little movements. “You don’t have to go back. You can stay here for as long as you need it. I know Ollie might not seem like it, but he loves you. He’ll understand.”

Roy tries to push some of his hair out of his face. He should have brought a hat with him. He, unfortunately, had other things on his mind. But he still manages a faint smile at Dinah.

“You two are just using me for my daughter,” he says.

She laughs again. “Maybe so. You’re not too bad, though.”

They make their way up the driveway. The door is closed, but there’s warm light coming out through the windows. If he listens hard, he can hear cartoons playing at what has to be a deafening volume. He pauses at the bottom of the porch. Dinah, a step ahead of him, turns.

“Dinah, can you do me a favor?” he asks.

“Sure,” she says. Her eyes crinkle at the corner when she smiles. “Anything you need.”

“Please don’t go beat up Jason,” he says.

The smile disappears. “Sure.”

“I’m being serious,” Roy says. He tries for firm, but it’s a nice feeling knowing she’s looking out for him. “It’s my problem, and I handled it.”

She huffs. “Fine. I guess.”

He laughs. “Thanks. It means a lot that you thought of it. Also, can you make sure Ollie doesn’t either? Jason might actually shoot him.”

“That is,” she considers, “very true. But that’s all up to you. You know how he is, there’s no stopping him once he gets an idea in his head.”

“That’s true,” Roy says slowly. “How about we just keep the details between us?”

“That, I can manage,” she says. She pulls open the door as she’s speaking. “The identity of your mystery man is safe with me.”

The door falls open with Ollie pressed against the other side. Lian is cradled in his arms. To his credit, he twists in midair so he eats it and Lian is held straight up in the air. She laughs.

“Seriously?” Dinah asks.

The corners of her eyes are crinkled again. Ollie groans.

“Don’t ‘seriously’ me,” he complains. “You guys are the ones keeping secrets.”

Roy finishes walking up the porch so he can scoop up Lian where she’s being offered to him. She smiles and hits her head against his collar bone. She’s such a weird kid.

“Does that mean it’s bedtime?” he asks her.

Another thump of her head. Roy laughs again. It’s easier than it usually is at Ollie’s house. He carefully steps over Ollie and heads inside. He knows where her crib is. She sleeps in the room Roy grew up in. He took it as an insult when he first heard, another attempt at erasing the history he had with them. He’s come to appreciate it now, though. New memories in this house to burn out the bad ones.

“You can’t be for real,” Ollie calls after him. He’s getting to his feet with the most offended expression Roy’s seen in years. “Don’t keep secrets from your Dad, Roy. It’s fucked up!”

“The baby,” Dinah warns him with a swat to his side.

He rubs it protectively and glares at her. “So now it’s ‘the baby’? What about when you stepped on that toy car? Didn’t seem like you were so worried about language—”

She swats him again. Roy shakes his head and rocks Lian in his arms. She’s got a death grip on his shirt, and her mouth is open in one of those toothless baby smiles. He’s glad to be here, strange as it is to say.

It’s nice that the Queen house feels like a home again. He wonders whether it was him or Ollie who changed enough to let it happen. Lian gurgles and smiles up at him. Maybe both. Makes sense, after all, that he’d be about on par with Ollie’s maturity. He’s always been an overgrown child. It’s a fonder thought than it usually is.

* * *

He finds himself having more fond thoughts over the next few weeks. He thinks of Jason constantly, still counts the days better than he counts his sobriety. Ollie, though, has the date Roy got clean written down next to his computer. It’s in red ink, underlined and with a smiley face next to it that Dinah wouldn’t be caught dead writing.

When he sees it, his eyes water dangerously. Ollie who’d been in there with him, starts crying for real, then gets pissed that Roy set him off. It dries Roy’s eyes, though, laughing at him. He knows for sure, though, that it’s thirteen months. Fourteen, by the time he’s settled in Ollie and Dinah’s.

He also gets a new apartment. It’s in a better neighborhood than before, the sort of place he doesn’t mind Lian looking out the windows of. Not nice enough for Oliver Queen’s son, sure, but it’s an upgrade. Besides, he knows that Ollie sneaked his name onto the lease so Roy could qualify for the credit check.

He gets a promotion at work. He gets a demotion immediately after for turning somebody’s Challenger into an amphibious vehicle, but his boss is impressed enough that he keeps the raise.

He spends more time at Ollie and Dinah’s. Things aren’t perfect there, not by a long shot, but it’s better than it’s ever been. He and Ollie still fight like cats and dogs, Dinah still disappears for hours with Lian for girl time, and both of them remind him that the offer’s open if he wants to get back into being a vigilante; but they’re only stumbles. They manage to come together at the end of the day.

Lian takes her first steps, says her first work — ‘shit,’ which all of them pretend isn’t hilarious — and starts teething. It’s how he measures time now, in milestones she makes. Because of that, he doesn’t know exactly how long it’s been when Dinah comes to him with a letter in her hands and a solemn expression on her face. He knows what it is even before he sees the familiar, delicate handwriting across the front.

Dinah gets it, too, and she hands it over with a minimum of fussing. She only meets his eyes and puts a hand on his shoulder.

“You don’t have to,” she says. “I can keep it until you’re ready.”

When he shakes his head, she gives him a smile and offers to take Lian from him so he can get some privacy. He refuses that, too, and they both pretend not to hear Lian say, “shit,” at being denied Dinah-time.

He opens the letter. His hands don’t shake, but he wishes they would. It’d be a good match to the fluttering in his stomach. He loves Jason, still. It hasn’t faded the way it has Jade, a low burn. It’s still fresh and, on most days, an open flame. But he can sit at a distance now, let it warm him. Eventually, it’ll be behind him.

_Roy,_

_It’s Jason. I’ve written this letter a lot of times, and Alfred says that this has got to be last one. He says he’s tired of picking up crumpled paper, but I think he wants me to rip the band-aid off. He might be on to something._

_I’m back at home. I heard through the grapevine that you ended up doing the same thing, and I’m happy for you. You and Oliver are good when you’re good, and it fucking sucks that you’re so bad when you’re not. Dick showed me a picture of Lian with Dinah, and she’s adorable. She looks so much like you. ~~I wish that I could see you again.~~_

_You were right about a lot of shit that night. I was fucked up, and I took it out on everybody. Mostly I took it out on you. You’re the only person that stuck with me and that made you an easy target. And you were right that I knew about your feelings towards me. ~~I felt the same way.~~ I didn’t treat them with the respect they deserved._

_I’m not going to make excuses for anything. I’m a fucking adult and it hurts to know how bad I was. Until that night, I didn’t understand it. The Lazarus Pit makes you so angry, and it’s so hard to see out of that. It makes you want to hurt people like nothing else in the world. I think, in my own way, I was trying to stop myself. I wanted you to hurt me, and I wanted you to do it the same way I did. That way you would be safe from me._

_I was wrong. You’re the best thing that’s happened to me since I came out of the ground, and I still couldn’t see that I was hurting you worse than anybody we ever fought. You deserved better than my bullshit. ~~I never wanted to be like Willis. I spent a lot of time doing some horrible shit when it clicked that I was the exact sort of person that ruined my life. Roy, I wish you would have fucking killed me instead of letting me hurt you like that. I should have done it myself.~~_

_I’m going to therapy now, and I hope you know that it’s because I want to live up to the example you set for me. You worked like nobody I know to be a better person, and I’m trying everyday to do half of that. ~~I asked Dinah if she had any recommendations and she squeezed my shoulder so hard I had to get an x-ray at the Cave.~~ The guy I found is good. He doesn’t take any shit, and it’s exactly the kind of person I need. It’s hard to find a mental health expert in Gotham that isn’t also a supervillain, but I managed._

_I understand if you never want to see me again. I mean it. I think it would be easier for me if I didn’t have to face what I did and how bad I hurt you. It’s hard enough writing this letter, just ask Alfred. However, I care about you deeply. It meant the world to me that you stayed by me when I was at my worst ~~and you should have left me to die~~. Now that I’m better, I’d like to be friends. I want you to know the person I am when I’m at my best. Even if I haven’t known them in a long time._

~~_Love,_ ~~  
~~_Sincerely,_ ~~  
~~_Love,_ ~~  
_Sincerely,_  
_Jason Todd (Wayne)_

_P.S. I had to get legally brought back to life so I could get insurance and ended up with Bruce’s last name. He cried like a baby when he saw. It was the funniest fucking thing ever._

~~_P.P.S Even if Alfred tells you I cried, too, I didn’t._ ~~

Roy finishes the letter and sets it down. He’s not crying again, which thank fucking God, but he feels like he has regardless. There’s a hollowed-out feeling in his chest. It’s a good kind of drained, like the feeling after a successful patrol.

He scoops up Lian, who’s playing with the envelope, and leaves their room. He shares with Lian when he stays over. It settles some of that franticness in the back of his head when he can wake up and see her breathing steadily in her crib. He takes the stairs down to the kitchen. He can hear Dinah and Ollie talking.

Well, he can hear Ollie talking. Dinah’s limited to mostly exasperated sighs and offended ‘Ollie’s. He comes in an sees the person at the stove is not, as he’d hoped, Dinah. He grimaces when he sees the spices laid out on the counter. Jesus, he’s barely recovered from the last chili night.

“Roy,” Ollie calls when he sees him, “do you remember that time Hal made a speedboat with his ring and forgot to imagine some gas for it?”

Dinah shakes her head. “That doesn’t make any sense at all. It’s not a real boat. Why would the gas matter?”

Roy grabs a stool at the counter next to Dinah and balances Lian in his lap. This close, the smell coming off the pot is blistering. Roy sneezes before he can answer. Lian is completely unaffected. He caught Ollie giving her a bean out of that hellish concoction once, and she just laughed once she finished chewing.

“No, Ollie’s telling the truth,” he said. “Hal used to be pretty stupid about stuff like that.”

“But gas?”

Ollie waves a hand in the air. The gesture appears to encompass the Green Lantern Corps.

“You know how those people get, D,” he says. “One of them gets caught up in the details and the next thing you know, the wall they made to cover you is falling apart because they didn’t will the cement to the right viscosity.”

She looks desperately like she wants to argue, but settles instead for shaking her head. She waits for Ollie to turn back to the stove before she touches his leg.

“Everything okay?” she asks

Roy smiles. “Yeah. It wasn’t bad. Pretty good actually. It was good to hear some of that stuff.”

She pats his thigh before she pulls her hand back. She looks so relieved Roy has to laugh. If he’d had to put up with post-Red Hood Roy, he might have been worried, too.

“Are you going to see him again?”

Roy shrugs. He tries for nonchalant, but Dinah doesn’t look fooled.

“What do you think I should do?” he asks.

“Shoot him,” Ollie cuts in. When Dinah and Roy look at him, he doesn’t even have the decency to look ashamed. “Seriously? I’m still in the kitchen. I don’t hear out of my eyes, guys.”

Dinah doesn’t look as upset as she could be. Roy laughs harder.

“I’m not going to shoot him,” he says to both of them.

“If you’re sure,” Dinah says. “But besides that, it’s not up to me. How do you feel about it? If you want to see him, I won’t stop you. You’re a smart guy, Roy. I trust you to know what’s best for you.”

Roy looks down at Lian. She’s still got the envelope in her hand, and she hasn’t decided to put it in her mouth yet. He counts it as a win. He’s embarrassed by how much Dinah’s words mean to him.

“I want to,” he says finally. He looks up and her face is completely blank, not a hint of what she’s thinking. Ollie, on the other hand is gritting his teeth. They’re both letting him talk, though, which is a nice change from the way things used to be. “He was important to me. I know that’s not all there is to a relationship, but I can’t change how much he mattered to me.

“He still does matter to me. We went through hell together, you know? He deserved better just as much as I did. As easy as it would be to blame everything on him, I was an adult. And I was an asshole, too. He wasn’t just bad to me. We were bad to each other. Horrible, like nothing in the world. But he’s making an effort to pick himself up. I know from firsthand experience how hard that is, and how much harder it can be without anybody by your side.”

Ollie sniffles. Roy looks over and Ollie flips him off.

“Chili in my eye,” he says thickly. He shakes his head. “And I’m here for you now, kiddo.”

Roy grins at him. “Shouldn’t have said that. You’re stuck with me now.”

Ollie tries some of his food. Whatever he tastes, he grabs a bottle and starts pouring it in. Liberally. Roy knows it’s just so he doesn’t see his eyes watering.

“Well, I’ll manage,” Ollie finally says.

Dinah smiles at the two of them. Her eyes, though, are still serious when she looks at him.

“You were saying,” she leads.

“I was saying that I don’t hold a grudge against him,” Roy says simply. “I don’t. There’s nothing to be gained from that. If he’s willing to change, then I’m willing to be there for him. He was with me through some hard times, too.”

Dinah nods. “You’ve come a long way from that little hat.”

Roy flicks the brim of his trucker cap. “Not that far.”

He doesn’t notice Ollie walking up to them until he’s looming. Dinah rolls her eyes, but she already knows what’s coming.

“Group hug?” he asks.

“I’m going to put you in a home,” Roy says. “You know that, right?”

Ollie grabs him by the shoulder and pulls him in anyways, grumbling the whole time about ungrateful wards. It’s not a bad place to be, even if Ollie smells spicy enough that Roy’s got to be missing his eyebrows at this point. It lasts up until Lian bursts into tears. Ollie drops the hug immediately so he can crouch to her level. Roy’d been joking when he said they were using him for his kid, but he’s having his doubts now.

“What wrong, princess?” Ollie asks. “What can Grandpa Ollie do for you?”

Lian cries and waves a stubby fist at the ground. The envelope she’d been playing with has fallen to the floor. Ollie smiles and crouches lower to grab it. Roy realizes very quickly what’s on it as soon as Ollie gets his hands on it.

“Oh, no,” he says.

Ollie looks at the paper. He looks at Roy. Back to the paper. This time, to Dinah. Not even Lian’s spared from his incredulous stare.

“Is this return address,” he begins, “Wayne Manor?”

Dinah grimaces. “Listen—”

“You were crying over a Wayne kid?” he demands of Roy.

Roy opens his mouth to say something. He closes it. There’s no coming back from this.

“Where did I go wrong, Roy? There’s a lot I can forgive, but this?” he asks. He brandishes the paper like it’s a weapon. “Which one?”

Roy rolls his eyes. “It’s not that serious.”

“Not that serious?” Ollie exclaims. “It’s horrible! Tell me which one it was so I can shoot him. And bear in mind, I’ll just shoot all of them if you don’t give me a name. And as a matter of fact, I’m shooting Bruce regardless. What kind of man raises his kids to make another man’s child cry?”

“I’m alright,” Roy laughs. Lian joins in, and they have a lovely bonding moment over Ollie’s devastation. “Seriously, you heard us. Remember, ‘still in the kitchen’?”

Ollie tugs at his goatee. He looks at the envelope one more time.

“I’m getting my bow,” he says. He strides away purposefully. “I’m getting my bow and shooting every Wayne from here to—”

“Wayne,” Lian squeals.

She claps afterward. Ollie makes a sound like he’s been stabbed. He turns on his heel and rushes back.

“Tell me that wasn’t what I thought it was,” he begs her.

“Wayne,” she says again. She claps along to her own little song. “Wayne, Wayne, Wayne.”

“Lian, no,” Ollie says. Roy’s laughing so hard he’s scared he might drop her. If he does, she’ll land on Ollie’s head. He’s that close. “That’s a bad word. Say ‘Queen.’”

Lian laughs. She doesn’t seem to be taking the advice.

“How about ‘Harper’? ‘Lance’?” he runs hand over his head. “I’ll settle for ‘arrow’ at this point.”

Lian gets a look on her face like she’s really considering it. Either that, or using the bathroom, but Roy changed her thirty minutes ago.

“Wayne,” she says once more.

Her voice is very serious. Roy laughs so hard he almost can’t hear Ollie talk.

“No,” Ollie begs. “Remember ‘shit’? Let’s go back to that. ‘Shit,’ Lian. Say ‘shit.’”

Dinah swats him. “Ollie!”

**Author's Note:**

> Let me know what you think ! If you see any mistakes, it's probably because I wrote the entire thing in 24 hours.
> 
> Hope you enjoyed !


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